Lauren Flahtery teaches us to ‘Always Prioritize’

Excerpt featuring Lauren Flahtery, EVP and CMO, Juniper Networks from “The @Work State of Mind Project”—a joint effort of gyro, an award winning b2b, and Forbes Insights. Surveying 543 business decision-makers, we found that boundaries of time and space that once defined the workplace no longer exist. To download the complete report go to www.gyro.com/atwork

Lauren Flaherty sees the ready access to information and dismantling of the borders between personal and professional life as beneficial to her job. “It was harder when you were doing this with workstations and faxes,” says Flaherty. “You had to do it from your house, so you had to be tethered to a wire. With the new devices, you are able to be more productive. You are able to be more responsible.” She adds: “With all these devices that liberate us, the freedom and mobility are exceptional.” Flaherty says that it’s important to develop time management skills, and that these may be best learned partly by observing “high performance” colleagues. “It’s a combination of experience and picking up best practices,” she says.

As the flow of information and communications has increased, she has also improved her ability to prioritize. “Pick a period of time when there hasn’t been a requirement for people in business to filter through a lot of information, distill what’s important, get to the core issues, focus on what matters,” Flaherty says. “Maybe the tools and technology have changed the volume, but the fundamentals are the same. You’ve got to hone those prioritization skills.”